AIC-SELCO Foundation

Decide which residency you are applying to

The Incubation Program has two residencies and they look for different things.

• Clean Energy Enterprises — you are running or starting an energy business that helps vulnerable communities earn a living. Solar sales and service businesses, solar lighting for off-grid homes, and energy services for small producers are the pattern in the existing incubatees.
• Technology Enterprises — you have built a product or machine. The existing incubatees here made things like a solar dryer for crops, a solar-powered silk-spinning machine, an automatic egg incubator and a battery-operated paddy transplanter.

If your work sits in both, apply under the one your strongest evidence supports and explain the other half in the form.

How the application works

• Both Apply Now buttons on the Incubation Program page open the same incubation form.
• The form is short: name, date of birth, email, contact number, then two free-text boxes, one about your business or enterprise and one about your innovation.
• Those two boxes are the whole application, so write them properly. Say what the product is, who buys it, what it costs them to keep using it, and what you have already built or sold.
• No deadline is published and there is no cohort calendar, so you can apply when you are ready rather than waiting for a call.
• Send anything the form cannot carry, such as photographs of a prototype or a note on your enterprise, to the centre's general inbox at info@aicselco.org.

What the centre is looking for

The centre says selection depends on a justification and review process, so build the justification into your answers.

• A community you can name. Every part of the centre's own writing is about low-income and underserved communities in the North East. Be specific about which farmers, weavers, artisans or households your work reaches.
• A business that pays for itself. The Clean Energy residency is described as mentoring entrepreneurs while they build something financially viable both for themselves and for the communities they serve. Show the unit that makes money, even a small one.
• Something you have made or sold. The published incubatees mostly arrive with a working machine, a product line or customers already served.
• A North East base. The centre exists for the region, and its incubatees are in Assam, Manipur and Meghalaya.

Practical points

• You do not need to be incorporated. Existing incubatees are registered as sole proprietorships, one-person companies and private limited companies, and some appear to have registered as they grew.
• The co-working space at the Guwahati campus is free for incubatees, and the campus has meeting rooms, basic administrative support and SDG Lab rooms showing working solutions. Plan for time on site.
• The centre does not publish a programme length, a fee or an equity policy. Ask about all three before you commit.
• If you want to visit or work with the centre rather than be incubated, the site has employment, consultant and internship listings, and the team runs trade facilitation fairs and innovator meets across the region.

AIC-SELCO Foundation is an Atal Incubation Centre in Guwahati, Assam, set up by SELCO Foundation and supported by the Atal Innovation Mission, NITI Aayog. It backs energy entrepreneurs and innovators building sustainable-energy businesses that serve low-income communities in the North East. Its centre is at Gotanagar, Maligaon in Guwahati; the organisation's registered office is in J. P. Nagar, Bengaluru.

SELCO Foundation started its own incubation centre in 2014 to support energy enterprises working with underserved communities. The North East centre, the one that carries the Atal Incubation Centre name, was set up in 2019. It appears in the Atal Innovation Mission's published list of Atal Incubation Centres as SELCO Foundation, Kamrup Metropolitan, Assam, with 2019 as the year of establishment. Neither the centre's own pages nor that list says how long the AIM funding runs, so the current funding window cannot be told from published sources.

How the incubation programme works

The centre runs one standing programme, the Incubation Program, and describes it as a collaborative platform for innovation and interaction with relevant networks in sustainable energy for poverty alleviation. It is open to energy entrepreneurs and innovators developing ideas within sustainable energy and energy efficiency.

The programme has two residencies. Clean Energy Enterprises is for entrepreneurs helping vulnerable communities get sustainable livelihood and earning opportunities, and gives them mentoring while they build a business that works financially for themselves and for the communities they serve. Technology Enterprises is for local innovators building technologies and products that can change the climate or social sustainability picture over the long term.

Incubatees get a free co-working space, mentoring by subject-matter experts, access to industries, access to startup events around the country through the centre's partner network, and a route into the wider startup ecosystem. The centre also names four areas it works on with enterprises: user and market research, product and manufacturing processes, business model development, and sustainability and growth.

Who can apply

The centre states that it invites applications from entrepreneurs interested in helping vulnerable communities get sustainable livelihood and earning opportunities, and that it supports local innovators developing technologies and products for climate or social sustainability. That is the whole of what it publishes about who may apply. It sets out no incorporation requirement, no state-of-residence rule and no category rule anywhere on its site.

Its published incubatee list gives a practical read on who has got in. The enterprises listed are registered as sole proprietorships, one-person companies and private limited companies, so a company is clearly not a precondition, and they are based in Assam, Manipur and Meghalaya, so the centre takes founders from across the North East rather than Assam alone. Those are patterns in who was selected, not published rules, so check with the centre if your case is borderline.

How to apply

Applications go through the incubation form on the centre's own site, reached from either Apply Now button on the Incubation Program page. The form asks for your name, date of birth, email and contact number, then for a description of your business or enterprise and a description of your innovation. There is no cohort calendar and no deadline published, so the form appears to stay open rather than running to intakes. General questions go to info@aicselco.org. The centre says selection depends on a justification and review process; it does not publish the stages of that review.

Sectors

The centre names six focused sectors: agriculture, food processing, animal husbandry, textile, craft and clean energy. It also refers to twelve or more other sectors without naming them. Across the enterprises it lists, the recurring work is solar products and services, solar-powered machinery for farming and weaving, and equipment for small rural producers.

Facilities

The Guwahati campus is a shared space for innovators, community organisations, financiers, end users, field mobilisers and entrepreneurs. It provides basic administrative services, security and meeting rooms, and the centre describes the space as somewhere grassroots stakeholders and early-stage entrepreneurs work through problems, test innovations and validate solutions. The co-working space is free for incubatees. The campus also has SDG Lab rooms, where visitors and participants can see working solutions in use. A Training Lab appears in the site's menu, but the page behind it has no content, so treat it as unconfirmed.

Track record

The centre publishes profiles of 24 incubatee enterprises, each with the founder's name, how the business is registered, its category and its state. Of those, 18 are in Assam, five in Manipur and one in Meghalaya; 14 are listed as clean energy enterprises and 10 as technology incubatees. Named enterprises include Kirat Biotech, Cleanergy Tech, Aicheng Innovation and Research, Nabashakti Solar Energy, Saraswati Hasta Tat Shilpa and Smart Power Loom and Handloom Industry. The centre does not publish a total number of startups supported, so 24 is a count of the profiles on the page rather than a claimed total.

Who runs it

Dr. Simanta Kalita is the CEO. The team page lists eight staff in all, including a senior programme manager, a senior project manager for incubation, a programme manager and a programme coordinator for partnership and outreach, and finance, administrative and technology roles. The board is drawn largely from SELCO Foundation and the wider development sector, and includes Huda Jaffer and Rachita Misra of SELCO Foundation, Svati Bhogle, Biswanath Sinha and Bulu Paul Muktieh, a former CMD of NEDFi. Their published biographies describe work at SELCO Foundation and other organisations rather than at the incubation centre.

Events and jobs

The centre runs outreach events around the region and names a North East Trade Facilitation Fair, a Mizoram Trade Facilitation Fair and a Manipur Stakeholder cum Innovators Meet among them. It also keeps an Opportunities menu with employment, consultant and internship listings, which is where to look if you want to work there rather than be incubated.